The conference papers from the 33rd No Frills conference held in Perth from 10 to 12 July are now available on the VOCEDPlus website. The theme this year was’ VET partnerships: Powering a dynamic workforce.’ A recent VDC News article summarised the paper NCVER routinely releases before each No Frills conference. This year’s was authored by Joanne Waugh. (However, we have also featured research on VET-employer partnerships before in VDC News, and you can access that article here.)

The conference program shows that there were 4 workshops on day 1, followed on day 2 by a keynote address by Professor Barney Glover, the Commissioner of Jobs and Skills Australia, where he covered some of the topic he highlighted in his Press Club address. The rest of the day was devoted to a series of presentations based around a number of themes: access and equity, pathways, workforce development, qualifications, international, Indigenous people, industry, teaching and learning, apprentices and trainees, digital technology and practice. The day concluded with a panel discussion on VET partnerships. Day 2 saw a small number of further presentations, an open discussion on partnerships and a concluding keynote by Futurist Gihan Perera.

NCVER has also released a ‘Vocational Voices’ podcast, featuring a number of the presenters at No frills. It runs for about 115 minutes and highlights the following seven presenters and presentations:

  1. Prof Thomas Deissinger from the University of Konstanz “Partnerships in VET teacher education in Ukraine: experiences from an ERASMUS+ project”
  2. Dr Don Zoellner from Charles Darwin University ‘Thinking differently about the status of VET: an institutional logics perspective”
  3. Prof Erica Smith from Federation University “What do we mean by ‘industry’ in vocational education and training? Research findings”
  4. Sam Harrison from Melbourne Polytechnic “Supporting inclusivity and disadvantaged learners”
  5. Anissa Jones from UNSW Sydney “Aboriginal perspectives in VET”
  6. Miriam Forte from Woguntha CAPS “Employment pathways for remote indigenous VET students: combining industry demand with culturally appropriate employment support” and finally,
  7. Brett Woods from Victoria University “No longer ‘ducks on the pond’: promoting women’s inclusion and safety in construction trades training through gender transformative pedagogy”

A copy of the transcript for this ‘Vocational Voices’ episode is also available.